CHAPTER 38
The night air clung to Selene’s skin like a memory she couldn’t shake.
She didn’t move when Damien sat beside her. Didn’t flinch when his hand—hesitant, trembling—rested between them on the cold stone bench. The silence stretched between them like a wound neither of them knew how to bandage yet.
“I don’t forgive you yet,” she had said.
And she meant it.
But the silence that followed wasn’t rejection. It was space. It was breathtaking. It was the one mercy she could offer—for now.
Damien looked out at the moonlit garden, his jaw tight, eyes sunken but clear for once. “You didn’t have to show them. Not like that.”
Selene’s voice was calm, but unyielding. “Yes, I did.”
He swallowed. “I just… I never thought she could do that. Not to you. Not to me.”
“You didn’t think at al
